What are we to believe, about a whole series of monolithic movies at least on par with The Lord of the Rings movies – even though the book is quite thin in comparison? This must be quite diluted. My memories of the book are pretty vague, but I still get the feeling that they extended the story considerably, to make more films. After the first act, when the dwarves invade Bilbo’s home and he’s taken in with the party, there’s practically nothing but running through beautiful scenery and sword fights with various groups of horrible creatures. Honestly, not much happends in the film. The evil enemies all fall at a single swoosh of the sword, while not a single friend gets a scratch. The film’s main episode, and probably the series’ key event – when Bilbo meets Gollum and comes across the ring – feels a bit short since the rest of the film is so long. Speaking of that, Martin Freeman is great as a little grumpy but still curious Bilbo. The beginning is wonderful, when Gandalf visits Bilbo, putting him totally off. It’s a little impressive that they collected the same actors again, from Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen to Elijah Wood and Ian Holm. Then it ends when the group of dwarfs reaches their home moutain.
The display technology deserves its own chapter. Indeed, we can see the movie in 3D, with 48 frames per second (High Frame Rate). It sounds geeky, but I think it made a difference. The image is very sharp, especially in moving shots. It’s fun, because you notice how the image quality demands more from the filmmaker. Peter Jackson is not known for his artistic photo – already in LotR I was disturbed with the editing and with the mindless, simple photo. Here, with a stunning image quality, the impression is close to hand camera though I’m sure they used rails and Steadicam. They simply should have thought through the shots more, and adapted to a better image quality. Then the views are obviously fantastic, even more grandiose than in previous films. So bring a vomiting bag if you’re seasick, and look forward to Wong Kar Wai and Ang Lee start using fast cameras.